President Obama’s proposed 2012 fiscal year budget, recently submitted to Congress—aka the Green Book—recommends modifying valuation discounts. In particular, the proposal would create an additional category of restrictions (“disregarded restrictions”) that would be ignored when valuing transfers by family members to a family-controlled entity if, after the transfer, the restriction would lapse or could be removed by the family. (See page 135 of the Green Book for more.)

 “For those who have been following this issue, what appears in this year’s Green Book is no different than the proposals included in earlier years,” writes Linda Trugman, chair of the ASA BV Committee. Since this is an election year, Trugman doesn’t believe that anyone in Congress will “push” the President’s proposal on discounts, at least not until after November, “but ASA's Government Relations Committee is keeping an eye on this.”